Michel Foucault: A Research Companion

Authors:
Raffnsøe, Sverre, Thaning, Morten S, Gudmand-Hoyer, Marius

Michel Foucault is arguably one of the most influential twentieth century scholars within the humanities and social sciences

No other book comprehensively covers Foucault's entire body of work in a way that includes not only his major book volumes, but his lectures and lesser known writings. This book offers a structured, thematic, lucid and comprehensive account of Foucault's entire work, offering the reader a unique guide

The most important and unique aspect of this volume is the analysis of the material from the Lectures at the Collège de France series. No other volume takes new insights from these sources into account and relates them to the rest of his work and the development of his thought

Highlights the cross disciplinary scope of Foucault's thought, and at the same time show how philosophical concerns arise from his work

Michel Foucault continues to be hugely influential. His diagnoses challenge us to rethink crucial phenomena such as madness, discipline, the human sciences, the state, neoliberalism, sexuality and subject formation. Based on his work in its entirety, and with special emphasis on his many recently published lecture series, this book provides an updated, comprehensive and original account of his thought. By reading Foucault as a philosopher, it offers an extensive systematic assessment and discussion of his unique conception of philosophical practice and brings a unifying trajectory in his work to light.

The authors of Michel Foucault: A Research Companion have provided an excellent overview of Foucault's work grounded in a rigorous familiarity with his diverse writings, lectures and interviews. What particularly recommends it is the way Foucault's investigations are shown to be part of a consistent philosophical praxis conceived as both a diagnosis of the present and a work on oneself. In whole, or in it parts, it will prove exceedingly useful to researchers and students alike.' - Mitchell Dean, Professor of Public Governance, Copenhagen Business School. Author of The Signature of Power: Sovereignty, Governmentality and Biopolitics (Sage 2013) and Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (Sage 1999-2010).

'Since his death, more material by Foucault has been published than appeared in his lifetime. Making use of his lecture courses alongside his major works, Michel Foucault: A Research Companion provides a roadmap and travel companion through the remarkable breadth of his interests and insights. A major undertaking which is consistently valuable.' - Stuart Elden, Professor of Political Theory and Geography, University of Warwick, UK. Author of Foucault's Last Decade (Polity Press, forthcoming 2015) and The Birth of Territory (University of Chicago Press 2013).

'The recently completed publication of Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France has opened up whole new facets of Foucault's work, inspired new research avenues, and pushed Foucault scholarship to the next level. This signature volume, Michel Foucault: A Research Companion, forms a crucial contribution to these ongoing developments. Based on a thorough-going examination of Foucault's lectures and published works, the volume offers a new perspective to help make way, in a coherent and consistent manner, through Foucault's writings and political engagements. Well-written, in a very accessible style, this Research Companion presents Foucault as a philosopher who recurrently engages in a diagnosis of our most critical contemporary experiences. It offers a unifying trajectory across the different phases and periods of Foucault's work. The book identifies, on the one hand, a number of recurring analytical categories in Foucault's way of thinking and approaching problems – diagnosis, the event, the experience, veridiction, normative matrices and more – that are fundamental and need to be taken into account; the book demonstrates, on the other hand, through Foucault's repeated interrogation of the present, an ongoing transpersonal modification of self and thought: a persistent philosophical meditation ignited by the non-philosophical, an enduring ordeal that modifies one's manner of being, perceiving and thinking, as one enters the game of truth, an ordeal that forces one to move towards something that has not yet arrived and to 'stand vigil for the day to come'. This Research Companion is an invaluable resource.' - Bernard E. Harcourt, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Director, Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought, Columbia University, US, and Directeur d'études, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris, France. Author of The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order (Harvard University Press 2011). Editor of Michel Foucault's 1973 Collège de France lectures La société punitive (Gallimard 2013) and co-editor of Foucault's lectures Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice (University of Chicago Press 2014).

'This book provides a wonderfully wide-ranging and comprehensive treatment of Foucault's work, examining material published both during his lifetime and after. The authors mount a lucid argument for the overall coherence of Foucault's work whilst at the same time drawing attention to its continual internal transformation. Their focus on Foucault's project of a diagnosis of the present, and its broadening of the boundaries of what has been traditionally understood to be philosophy, is particularly enlightening as a way of understanding Foucault's ongoing relevance and applicability in contemporary settings.' - Clare O'Farrell, Senior Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Author of Foucault: Historian or Philosopher? (Macmillan 1989), and Michel Foucault (Sage 2005). Editor of Foucault: The Legacy (Queensland University of Technology 1997). Founder and maintainer of the Foucault News blog and the michel-foucault.com site.

'So much has been written about the work of Michel Foucault that it is an unexpected pleasure to discover something new. In this comprehensive, scholarly and committed analysis, Sverre Raffnsøe and his colleagues show how Foucault's books, interviews and lectures constitute a continual, profound and always unfinished work of diagnosis of our present, a work that goes beyond mere critique and seeks to enhance our capacities to learn from our pasts in order to transform the futures that are unceasingly taking shape. In reading Foucault in this way, they make a compelling case that this diagnostic practice should be the stake and the test of philosophy today.' - Nikolas Rose, Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Social Science, Health & Medicine, King's College, UK. Author of Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind (with Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Princeton University Press 2013), The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press 2007) and Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (Free Association Books 1989/1999). Editor of The Essential Foucault (with Paul Rabinow, The New Press 2003).

'In Michel Foucault: A Research Companion, Raffnsøe, Gudmand-Høyer and Thaning offer a comprehensive and exquisitely detailed review of the works of Michel Foucault. Unlike those who point to revolutionary breaks in Foucault's thought, the authors show continuity in Foucault's philosophical practice of unrelentless self–criticism. We owe a debt of gratitude to Raffnsøe and his colleagues for returning us to Foucault, the philosopher, and to his modes of criticism that can guide us in our research. No one interested in the application of Foucault's conceptualizations in the studying of our present can be without this book.' - Patricia Ticineto Clough, Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at the Graduate Center and Queens College, City University of New York, US. Author of Auto Affection (University of Minnesota Press 2000), and Feminist Thought and The End(s) of Ethnography (Blackwell 1994). Editor of The Affective Turn (Duke University Press 2007).

The authors of Michel Foucault: A Research Companion have provided an excellent overview of Foucault's work grounded in a rigorous familiarity with his diverse writings, lectures and interviews. What particularly recommends it is the way Foucault's investigations are shown to be part of a consistent philosophical praxis conceived as both a diagnosis of the present and a work on oneself. In whole, or in it parts, it will prove exceedingly useful to researchers and students alike.' - Mitchell Dean, Professor of Public Governance, Copenhagen Business School. Author of The Signature of Power: Sovereignty, Governmentality and Biopolitics (Sage 2013) and Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (Sage 1999-2010).

'Since his death, more material by Foucault has been published than appeared in his lifetime. Making use of his lecture courses alongside his major works, Michel Foucault: A Research Companion provides a roadmap and travel companion through the remarkable breadth of his interests and insights. A major undertaking which is consistently valuable.' - Stuart Elden, Professor of Political Theory and Geography, University of Warwick, UK. Author of Foucault's Last Decade (Polity Press, forthcoming 2015) and The Birth of Territory (University of Chicago Press 2013).

'The recently completed publication of Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France has opened up whole new facets of Foucault's work, inspired new research avenues, and pushed Foucault scholarship to the next level. This signature volume, Michel Foucault: A Research Companion, forms a crucial contribution to these ongoing developments. Based on a thorough-going examination of Foucault's lectures and published works, the volume offers a new perspective to help make way, in a coherent and consistent manner, through Foucault's writings and political engagements. Well-written, in a very accessible style, this Research Companion presents Foucault as a philosopher who recurrently engages in a diagnosis of our most critical contemporary experiences. It offers a unifying trajectory across the different phases and periods of Foucault's work. The book identifies, on the one hand, a number of recurring analytical categories in Foucault's way of thinking and approaching problems – diagnosis, the event, the experience, veridiction, normative matrices and more – that are fundamental and need to be taken into account; the book demonstrates, on the other hand, through Foucault's repeated interrogation of the present, an ongoing transpersonal modification of self and thought: a persistent philosophical meditation ignited by the non-philosophical, an enduring ordeal that modifies one's manner of being, perceiving and thinking, as one enters the game of truth, an ordeal that forces one to move towards something that has not yet arrived and to 'stand vigil for the day to come'. This Research Companion is an invaluable resource.' - Bernard E. Harcourt, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Director, Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought, Columbia University, US, and Directeur d'études, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris, France. Author of The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order (Harvard University Press 2011). Editor of Michel Foucault's 1973 Collège de France lectures La société punitive (Gallimard 2013) and co-editor of Foucault's lectures Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice (University of Chicago Press 2014).

'This book provides a wonderfully wide-ranging and comprehensive treatment of Foucault's work, examining material published both during his lifetime and after. The authors mount a lucid argument for the overall coherence of Foucault's work whilst at the same time drawing attention to its continual internal transformation. Their focus on Foucault's project of a diagnosis of the present, and its broadening of the boundaries of what has been traditionally understood to be philosophy, is particularly enlightening as a way of understanding Foucault's ongoing relevance and applicability in contemporary settings.' - Clare O'Farrell, Senior Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Author of Foucault: Historian or Philosopher? (Macmillan 1989), and Michel Foucault (Sage 2005). Editor of Foucault: The Legacy (Queensland University of Technology 1997). Founder and maintainer of the Foucault News blog and the michel-foucault.com site.

'So much has been written about the work of Michel Foucault that it is an unexpected pleasure to discover something new. In this comprehensive, scholarly and committed analysis, Sverre Raffnsøe and his colleagues show how Foucault's books, interviews and lectures constitute a continual, profound and always unfinished work of diagnosis of our present, a work that goes beyond mere critique and seeks to enhance our capacities to learn from our pasts in order to transform the futures that are unceasingly taking shape. In reading Foucault in this way, they make a compelling case that this diagnostic practice should be the stake and the test of philosophy today.' - Nikolas Rose, Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Social Science, Health & Medicine, King's College, UK. Author of Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind (with Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Princeton University Press 2013), The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press 2007) and Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (Free Association Books 1989/1999). Editor of The Essential Foucault (with Paul Rabinow, The New Press 2003).

'In Michel Foucault: A Research Companion, Raffnsøe, Gudmand-Høyer and Thaning offer a comprehensive and exquisitely detailed review of the works of Michel Foucault. Unlike those who point to revolutionary breaks in Foucault's thought, the authors show continuity in Foucault's philosophical practice of unrelentless self–criticism. We owe a debt of gratitude to Raffnsøe and his colleagues for returning us to Foucault, the philosopher, and to his modes of criticism that can guide us in our research. No one interested in the application of Foucault's conceptualizations in the studying of our present can be without this book.' - Patricia Ticineto Clough, Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at the Graduate Center and Queens College, City University of New York, US. Author of Auto Affection (University of Minnesota Press 2000), and Feminist Thought and The End(s) of Ethnography (Blackwell 1994). Editor of The Affective Turn (Duke University Press 2007).